When he had drawn poor Shaggycoat within striking distance he raised the club slowly.
The beaver saw the flash of the sunlight on the stick and the sinister look in Joe's eye, and something told him that his hour had come. He had seen a beaver killed once by a falling limb, and he knew quite well how stiff and motionless he would be when the club had descended. All in a second the picture of his woodland lake and Beaver City flashed before him and there was Brighteyes, and the beaver kids all waiting expectantly for him; all the colony waiting for his home-coming that they might begin repairs upon the dam.
The sun had never shone so brightly in all his life as it did at that moment, and the murmur of a brook had never sounded so sweet in his ears. But some great lady in the far away city was waiting impatiently for her cloak, and the factor at the post was holding out two bright shillings, so Joe brought the club down with a mighty stroke.
But the love of life was strong in Shaggycoat, as it is in nearly all animate things, so, quick as a flash, he twitched his head to one side, and the club fell in the stream with a great splash, filling the trapper's eyes with water.
"By gar," ejaculated Joe, blowing the water from his mouth, and laying down the club to wipe his eyes. "You is one mighty slick beaver, that you is, but it wasn't smart of you to get into my trap. Dat time you was one pig fool." Then a sudden inspiration came to Joe.
"By gar," he exclaimed, "I good mind to pring you home to my leetle gal. How she laugh when she see you. You pehave, I do it. You bother me, I prain you."
Then Joe scratched his head and thought. How could it be done? Finally a plan came to him, for he went to the alder bushes and cut a crotched stick, and another stick which was straight. With the crotched stick, he pinned Shaggycoat's neck to the ground, while with a piece of buckskin thong taken from his pocket he made a tight fitting collar for the beaver's neck. Then with another piece of thong he bound his hind legs tightly together. When this had been done, he passed a stout stick through the collar and the other end of it, between the beaver's hind legs. He then loosed the trap, and, grasping the stick half-way between the collar and the thong on the hind legs, started off with the unhappy beaver, carrying him, so that all the landscape looked upside down.
At first, Shaggycoat struggled violently but whenever he struggled Joe tapped him on the nose with his club and he soon saw that his best course was to keep still and let his captor carry him wherever he would.
The stick through the collar choked him so that he could hardly breathe, and the thong on his hind legs cut into the muscles, but even these discomforts were better than the club from which he had so narrowly escaped, so he behaved very well for a wild thing and watched Joe's every motion, always with a view of making a break for freedom at the first opportunity. But there seemed little chance of escape as long as the stick held him stretched out at his full length so that he could not get at his fetters.
So the woods went by with the trees all upside down, sticking their tops into the sky.